Copyright police will learn nothing from Australia's laughable war on piracy

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Copyright police will learn nothing from Australia's laughable war on piracy

Forget pirates, Hollywood need only look in the mirror to see its worst enemy.

Right now Australia would have a three-strikes piracy rule, were it not for the fact that content holders expected someone else to pay for it. Why lobby the government and fight for the introduction of an industry piracy code if you're going to piss it away?

Meanwhile the backers of Dallas Buyers Club would already have the names of pirates who downloaded the movie, were it not for the fact that the judge didn't trust them not to abuse that information with speculative invoicing.

Having now shot themselves in both feet, the copyright police still continue to wave their gun around in the air. Even with the politicians and the law on their side, content owners are losing battle after battle due to their own arrogance.

They're throwing away money and wasting political will because they're too stubborn to acknowledge what's blindingly obvious to everyone else – they need to win back alienated customers rather than threaten them.

Now the copyright holders are pinning their hopes on Australia's pitiful site blocking regime, which is literally child's play to defeat with one click using a VPN or proxy server.The first target of the site blocking laws is streaming aggregator SolarMovie, which few people had heard of before Village Roadshow dragged it into the spotlight this week.

Once you understand how SolarMovie works you start to appreciate how futile it is to crack down on such sites.

What is SolarMovie?

Just like The Pirate Bay, SolarMovie doesn't actually host content. It's just a directory which makes it easier to find pirated content stashed away in cloud storage services.Streaming search engines like SolarMovie are more convenient than file-sharing because you don't need to install any software or wait for the video to download. You just click on the movie or TV show you want to watch and you're presented with a list of sources which will play instantly in your browser, just like any other streaming video service.

Of course you're also inundated with the dodgy advertising and questionable software updates which frequent the darker corners of the web.
There are plenty of alternatives to SolarMovie, such as WatchSeries, LosMovies, TubePlus and KissCartoon. Just like BitTorrent search engines, new services and domain names pop up faster than they can be blocked.

These pirate streaming directories have been popular for several years but haven't attracted as much attention as file-sharing. This is partially because it's harder for the copyright police to catch you — when you're watching SolarMovie you're not uploading data to other users. Popular BitTorrent search engines like The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents are adding similar features so you can stream movies rather than download them.

How can content owners fight back?

People are turning to SolarMovie and pirate streaming services because they're convenient and easy to use. The solution to piracy is to give the people what they want, in a convenient manner and at a fair price — reflected in the fact that Netflix is booming in this nation of pirates even though we could steal all of its content elsewhere.

The movie studios and other copyright holders could do something similar to SolarMovie, with a cross-service search engine linking to legitimate content, but they find it easier to waste their time and money on futile legal challenges than admit they need to change their ways. Politicians also find it easier to back the powerful content lobby than to stand up and demand a better deal for Australians.

We've seen the rise of independent content directories like JustWatch and Gyde, which let you search across popular services like Quickflix, Netflix, Presto and Stan (co-owned by Fairfax Media) along with the movie rental stores. Look to the actual content owners and the best they can offer is Australia's pathetic Digital Content Guide, which is more of an insult than an olive branch.

Rather than investing in new ideas which could win people back from piracy, the inept copyright lobby continues to favour the stick over the carrot. This misguided crusade has turned people against them and ensured the general public is far better educated as to how to bypass token anti-piracy efforts, driving the problem underground where it's much harder to fight.

Of course out of sight is out of mind and you can be sure that politicians and studio executives will soon claim they're winning the war on piracy by blocking SolarMovie because they haven't caught anyone lately. It's the equivalent of watching cars drive up on the footpath to get around a roadblock but still declaring the roadblock a success because nobody actually drove through it.

How many battles do the copyright police need to lose before they admit they're never going to win this war with superior legal firepower?

Their next move should be a significant gesture to acknowledge that Hollywood shares the blame for the piracy problem and wants to work with consumers to find a solution. Of course that won't happen, they'll just embark on new battles they can never win.